


Disco Stick

by stereomer



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereomer/pseuds/stereomer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU with Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" video</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disco Stick

Usually Nate sees at least a whole file on his targets, but this time his boss had only given him a slip of paper with a first name written on it. Nate guesses it's a rival or some personal vendetta thing, considering the hefty bonus that's coming his way as soon as he finishes the job.

_If_  he finishes the job -- he's been doing recon on this guy for a couple weeks and there hasn't been anything noteworthy. He doesn't even litter.

Nate's curiosity finally gets the best of him after an eight hour stakeout and subsequent kill on the following Friday. He changes into a simple button-down and some slacks, then arrives at the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop just as the only other customer is receiving his drink. He's tall, taller than Nate, and wearing a slim-fitting suit that must have cost at least a thousand dollars.

But he's also wearing a silver eyepatch.

Nate buys a drip coffee and exhales slowly before making his way over to the counter at the other end of the shop. On his last step, the toe of his shoe scrapes down the heel of a polished black wingtip.

"Sorry," Nate apologizes. He waits, but the guy doesn't even glance his way. After a moment, Nate taps his own eye, even though the guy is still concentrating on prying off the lid on his coffee, and says, "So, those are back in fashion again? The eyepatch, I mean."

"It's Comme des Garçons," the guy replies in a dry voice. He pours in cream with a quick, circular motion and copies the same path with a mixing straw in his other hand. Then he pulls the straw out and places a few droplets on his tongue like some sort of taste test.

Finally, he looks at Nate. The eye that's visible is a bright blue color that reminds Nate of tropical islands.

"You never know what you can accidentally get in your drink," he explains as he throws the straw away. Now that his coffee is apparently poison-free and safe for ingestion, his focus seems to shift.

Most people size people up instinctively, subconsciously, quick enough to not make it obvious. This guy, however, takes his time. His gaze flicks up to examine Nate's hair, then drops back down to his mouth and along his jawline. After he's done, he raises his eyebrows and takes a sip of his coffee, like Nate's passed some sort of test.

For a brief moment, Nate is hyper-aware of everything, reverting back to his awkward high school self who blushed when girls stared at him. The feeling only passes with a concerted effort on his part.

"Comme des who?" Nate offers blandly.

"Alexander," the guy says, holding out his hand.

This whole conversation is turning out to be one huge non sequitur. Nate doesn't mind. His hands might still smell a little like gunpowder, but he shakes anyway.

"You're aware that that was probably the most obvious conversation opener ever," Alexander says.

"Yeah, I know." Nate shrugs and tries to act like he's harmless and embarrassed, like this is his failed attempt at flirting.

But that breezy, casual mood changes into something else once they release hands. Alexander absently rubs his thumb against his fingertips before sniffing them. Then he eyes Nate, who feels like someone just punched him in the head. Yeah, there's the disassembled pieces of a Glock 9 floating somewhere along the East River, but nobody's supposed to  _know_  that. Especially a suit in a coffee shop who's supposed to be Nate's next hit.

"Well. This should be interesting," Alexander says, as if their future's written already. He retrieves an inhaler from his pants pocket, takes a pull, and then grins brightly.

What's strange is that Nate almost believes him.

 

*

 

"I missed the drop," Nate says into his phone. "He got away."

He just needs some time to figure this one out.

 

*

 

A week later, Nate still doesn't know Alexander's last name, but that goes both ways. He also doesn't know what he does for a living, or how he could afford a sprawling penthouse in Tribeca -- and Sweden, and Fiji, and Dubai -- at the age of...something. It's okay though, because Nate has secrets of his own. All he tells Alexander is that he's a Dartmouth grad turned Marine turned Recon Marine turned if-I-told-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you-haha-no-really. He comes and goes whenever he wants to, which is getting to be pretty often. Sometimes Alexander is home, sometimes he isn't, but he's always back by midnight.

Nate walks in around 2am one night and finds Alexander sitting on the couch, reading stock quotes in dim lighting. The eyepatch is off. He spreads his legs obediently, letting Nate stand in the angle of space, close enough to nudge the newspaper with his body before Alexander folds it up and puts it away.

"Good evening," Alexander says with a faint smile. His eyes are bright with color, even in the low light.

In response, Nate silently places one hand on the arm of the couch and one against the back, leaning down and in. He doesn't move when Alexander slowly reaches up, sliding his hand into Nate's suit jacket, tracing the curve of his ribcage until he bumps into the holster hidden against Nate's side.

"What would you say if I told you that the first time we met, I was supposed to put two bullets into your head?" Nate asks, carefully looking for a sign of -- anything, really.

"I'd say it wouldn't be the first time someone had that agenda," Alexander replies calmly. "Also, I would say that I was supposed to do the same to you the day after."

Nate pulls back -- out of indignation or surprise, he doesn't really know -- but Alexander wraps a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him back in. There's an awkward bump of noses, but then they start kissing lazily, Alexander's tongue warm against Nate's. He always seems so incredibly focused on whatever he's doing, and it usually results in Nate on his hands and knees, biting at a pillow or panting into the crook of his elbow.

He feels Alexander squeeze his hipbone with long fingers and straightens up to allow him better access to his belt.

"I put that agenda on hold," Alexander tells him.

"Good to hear," Nate says, already breathing a little harder. "Me too."

 

*

 

One of the buttons on Nate's shirtcuffs had popped off and fallen behind the dresser. Nate is kneeling, blindly sticking his hand into the gap between the dresser and the wall, when he feels a piece of paper or something. He pinches it and pulls it out.

It's a matte photograph. Almost the entire frame is taken up by long, platinum blonde hair cut into avant garde angles, straighter than bone and flying all over the place as if the picture had been taken mid-motion. Nate can make out a closed eyelid precisely lined with black, the arch of an eyebrow, and about half of a pink-lipped smile.

He fingers the the bottom left corner, which seems to be scorched off and actually eaten away a little by acid. Based on the numerous layers and overlaps of Scotch Tape, it's been torn into quarters and taped back together, and then torn into eighths at a later date and taped back together again. He doesn't know why he sniffs it, but he does -- it mostly smells like generic wooden furniture and dust, but there's a faint scent of perfume, too.

"I found a picture," Nate says, walking out of the bedroom.

"My ex-fiancee," Alexander says with barely a cursory glance, as if he recognizes it not by the image but because it's the only picture in his apartment. Nate would believe that. He holds the photo by its edges, putting a tiny bit of pressure in his grip so that the picture warps up and distorts. He relaxes, then does it again.

"Where is she now?"

"Around. It was, ah, an intense relationship. We understood each other, but ultimately it was," Alexander pauses. He turns off the TV, then sort of smiles and says, "It was bad for our health."

Nate blinks. He remembers that Alexander actually loves puns. "The eyepatch," Nate guesses.

Alexander taps the corner of his right eye, then taps his nose. "Correct." He gets up and walks over to the bar.

"And the inhaler."

"Poisoned," he says casually, picking up a decanter and uncapping it with a loud  _clink_  of glass. The condo is all windows and open spaces, and it somehow works to magnify both silence and sound. Nate is actually surprised that no neighbors have called the cops yet, especially considering that there have been several brawls between the two of them resulting in broken furniture, which resulted in sex and more broken furniture.

Nate's still holding the picture. He glances down at the blonde hair and the narrow curve of her chin.

"Well, to be fair, I did throw her off a balcony once. Call it a crime of passion," Alexander muses. He looks over his shoulder. "Scotch?"

 

*

 

Nate wakes up instinctively. He's lying on his side; when he sees the gun on the nightstand, he raises himself up onto his elbow.

"I always choose ones who can give as good as they get," Alexander observes in a low voice. He's sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at Nate almost fondly, head tilted, eyes soft. There's a Polaroid in his hand. The picture is angled away from Nate, but he thinks he can guess what it is.

Nate's never really been interested in fondness. Maybe it's his boyish face that leads everyone to believe otherwise, but he didn't get to where he is now with some wide-eyed, "aw, shucks!" attitude. He'd like to believe that he's still an idealist, but he's an idealist who's been to war and who used to yell, "Kill!" at the top of the lungs about a hundred times a day. Now he's an idealist who carries out hits on people and justifies it to himself because all his targets are scumbags.

Most of them, anyway. Sometimes he never really figures it out.

He reaches for the gun, picks it up, and disassembles it with one hand. The magazine falls to the floor with a dull noise.

"Come here," he says. He twists his hand in Alexander's shirt and pulls him down.


End file.
